


Closer to the Horse

by DwarvenGatorade



Series: Cracks of Valdemar [2]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, Timey-Wimey, rationalfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22096633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenGatorade/pseuds/DwarvenGatorade
Summary: Two Groveborn Companions bicker their way through time (slash meta-time). Rolan tries to keep Valdemar's timeline on the straight and narrow, while Taver seems to believe he's in a crackfic.
Series: Cracks of Valdemar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813504
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	Closer to the Horse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Lead me into shadows once again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17096885) by [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/pseuds/Swimmer963). 



> Major spoilers for AS42V through end of Book 5 (Lead me into shadows once again), significant spoilers through Book 7 (Wisdom tells me I should turn away), minor spoilers through start of Book 8 (Nothing can I hold of you but thought).

_A blinding blue starburst nova of raw light._

_The ineffable power of all the gods, known and unknown, imagined and real, shaping a realm of incomprehensible glory — and blueness — outside of time and space._

_A handful of intelligences, souls brilliant as suns, brought into existence in that blue place with a single purpose: the companionship and moral guidance of the Heralds of Valdemar. Which is kind of two distinct purposes, when you think about it. But anyway._

_Shining blue light, bright as the beaming blue sunbeams of righteous blue hope —_

“Cut it out, Taver.”

_Why whatever do you mean, Rolan Magneus Starsworn the Infinite, Glorious Protector Spirit of Valdemar?_

“The booming mindvoice exposition. We have work to do.”

“Maybe _you_ have work to do.” In that blue place, one radiant blue figure floated down and settled on a workbench next to another, equally radiant blue figure. The latter figure was attending to a complex device of pure light, all nodes and lines. “I’m already _done_.”

The-light-that-was-Rolan gave the-light-that-was-Taver a _look._ “We’ve been created with the task of safeguarding Valdemar in perpetuity. We’ve been granted access to possibility webs on par with those of the gods themselves. And we’ve existed for twenty minutes. You can’t be _done.”_

 _“_ Oh but I am! Let’s take a peek.” The Taver-light pointed to a node in the Rolan-light’s web. At his merest thought, the node expanded from a pinhead to a snowglobe to an audience chamber, and the two figures of light observed the scene within.

The towering avatar of some unknown god tapped a horse’s shoulders with a holy sword. **“You have delivered Valdemar from a great evil, Taver,”** the avatar said. **“** **Your unorthodox preparations have prevailed once again.”**

In the inner scene, the horse called Taver looked briefly at an empty space where, long ago in another realm, Rolan stood observing, and winked.

“Such childishness,” Rolan said as he dissolved the scene and turned back to working at the node-and-line device.

Taver threw an arm around Rolan’s shoulder, insofar as such concepts as “arm” and “shoulder” could apply to what were, again, beings of pure light. “Listen, Rolan... we’re gonna be working together for a long time, right?”

“Interminable.”

“Exactly. So let’s have it out: why do I bother you so much?”

Rolan raised an eyebrow, then sighed and looked Taver straight in the eye. “You play, and you mock, and you jest, despite our grave responsibilities. You then have the temerity to pretend that your madness has as much method as my madnessless methodicality. Your very way of being denigrates the undertaking of my painstaking predictive labor.”

Taver clapped his hands. “Exactly! That’s it!”

“You admit to devaluing my work?” Rolan asked.

“In a good way!” Taver hopped up and perched on the bench, feet tucked under him. “See, the gods _count_ on you. They _rely_ on you. Like a table!” Taver rapped on the workbench. “They take you _for granted_. Whereas I’m a wildcard, always on the cusp of granting. Will I grant, will I not grant, who knows.”

“So your incompetence makes me look better.”

Taver laughed, rocking backward off the workbench and crashing to the ground. He guffawed. He slapped his knee. Then he expanded, starbright, into a formless intelligence interwoven with the entirety of the blue place.

_You think this realm is all about knowledge and control. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite: it’s about mystery, surprise, shaking things up._

_A random scene expanded from the node-and-line device, a devastatingly handsome mage channeling energy through a powerful storm._

_Mortals like Leareth get it. Why do you think he’s always trying to kill whatever random people the gods are toying with? To throw off their plans! To force them to think._

_And that’s what the gods are doing with each other all the time: finding the weird little nodes and lines on the edge of plausibility where they’ll have an advantage over the other gods, where they can use their intuition and soft power to steer things their way, without having to get bogged down in centuries of pseudo-omniscient play-and-counterplay._

Taver settled back down from a universe-encompassing demigod to a merely awe-inspiring figure of light.

“Every time I throw a wrench in your carefully tuned plans, who do the gods turn to to fix it?” Taver pointed a finger right at Rolan’s chest. “You, Mr. Rolan Magneus Starsworn.”

Rolan took on a weighing look; opened his mouth as if to speak; then let out a sigh and allowed his shoulders to untense, slightly.

Acceptance.

Rolan made to return to his work, and Taver made a gracious “go right ahead” wave of his arms.

As he examined more nodes and lines, Rolan added, “You do know that’s not my name, right?”

Taver winked.

* * *

“Noooo Taverrrr!”

A searing blast of sorcerous flame exploded toward Herald Tantras, back during the war with Karse, before he was an asshole. It would certainly have killed him, as Rolan well knew, were it not for the timely intervention of Tantras’ Companion, the magical ethics horse known as Taver.

Laying in a heap at his Chosen’s feet, his once-white coat scorched beyond recognition, Taver gasped out to Tantras in mindspeech: : _I’ll always love you, Tran. Go win the war. You’ve got this.:_

Then with his dying whinny, he looked briefly at an empty space and winked.

“Oh come on!” Rolan exclaimed from outside the scene, where he watched in the blue place with Taver.

“Haha yes!” Taver shouted. He smacked at Rolan’s shoulder impatiently. “Check it now, check it now.”

The node-and-line device shook and rattled with the ramifications of Taver’s sacrifice in the distant past-future. (Why weren’t the nodes always already updated? Well the blue place was outside of time, but obviously it wasn’t outside of meta-time.)

Rolan furiously processed nodes, tracing lines of reality and counter-reality until he found the official treaty signing that ended the war between Valdemar and Karse. Given the most recent turn of events, it was set to take place one fine spring day 802 years after foundation. As opposed to Rolan’s originally predicted date of, you know, _1376._

Taver, leaning over Rolan’s shoulder, threw his arms up in victory. “Ahaha! Your ass is grass, Rolan! Time to pay the piper.”

In retrospect, it had been a mistake for Rolan to take up Taver’s bet, ludicrously improbable though losing had seemed. Taver had wagered that peace would be officially declared between Valdemar and Karse, centuries earlier than Rolan _knew_ it almost _had_ to occur. Karse was a relentless foe, and the war would drag on, in fits and starts, until the reign of Queen Selenay in the 14th century.

Barring, of course, a political marriage between the warring states, an unprecedented Valdemaran counterinvasion, a blood-magic attack from a decorated herald-mage, the personal manifestation of a major god, and, naturally, the inconceivable survival of the King’s Own Herald.

If Taver had lost his bet, he would have immediately vowed to work in the blue place in silence for a hundred meta-centuries. How Rolan yearned to go even a meta-candlemark without a nerve-jangling interjection in Taver’s musical tenor. Instead...

“During the reign of Queen Selenay,” Rolan pronounced, “I vow to project no mindspeech.”

Taver ran around Rolan in a circle, arms raised, cheering “woooooooo!”

“I also hereby _censure_ you, Taver, for reckless insubordination.”

“—ooooo what?” Taver hunched over andsquared up with Rolan. “Wait, do you think I orchestrated this wager for _fun?”_

Rolan didn’t dignify the question with a response.

“Okay, obviously I’m enjoying this immensely. I mean, you’re basically going to have to, what, tap out Morse code in the dirt to get your Chosen to listen to you? Maybe she can put peanut butter on your gums so it looks like you’re talking. Oh I know, if she gets captured and you need to send for help, you can gallop up to the queen with a bunch of _arrows_ in your mouth and—“

“Enough!” Rolan stood up with a blast of blue force that knocked Taver flat on his back. “I am slow to anger, but I toe the line!”

Taver held up his hands in a “whoa whoa whoa” gesture. “Sorry Rolan. I forgot this must be a hard time for you, since I was right and you were wrong.”

Rolan pointed a newly conjured warspear of holy blue light at Taver’s face.

“But I didn’t do this just to get under your brilliant, sun-like corona,” Taver added hastily. “This whole ‘war wager silence scheme’? I’m carrying it out at the direction of a _god.”_

“Yeah?” Rolan asked through gritted teeth. “ _Which one.”_

Taver gently nudged the spear point to the side, and leaned up and forward conspiratorially. “None other than the entity known as... Remmwis369.”

Rolan plunged the spear into the ground next to Taver. “More of your ‘Remmwis’ nonsense?” he growled.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense!” Taver scrambled to his feet and began gesturing wildly. “Sure I wasn’t ‘directed’ to get myself killed, like, _directly_ , but the signs were all there! And I mean, Karis making her way to Haven, Vkandis showing up in Sunhame, getting Vanyel into _just the right pickle_ so he’d soulfuck those Karse soldiers to death? _I_ certainly didn’t cause all those highly entertaining departures from the mainline course of history. There has to be a _hidden hand!”_

Rolan leaned against his spear with a sigh. “A hidden hand. One mighty enough to constrain heralds, convince Groveborn, and coerce gods. Yet so hidden that no power, god or Groveborn, has ever actually encountered it, _including you?”_

Taver winced wanly. “Maybe it’s... meta-hidden?”

“And you truly believe this... this metaphysical conspiracy theory, despite having no real evidence or justification, no epistemic basis to do so?”

Taver looked suddenly serious. “I’m a gnostic, Rolan. I don’t just believe it: I gnow it.”

Rolan threw up his hands and let the spear vanish. “Fine! You win. _Again_. I revoke my censure.”

Taver pumped one fist in the air.

“It is apparent to me that you were seeking what was, in your mind, best for Valdemar, and that your ‘wildcard’ actions stemmed from some combination of folly, malfunction, and psychosis, _not_ malice.”

“I’ll take it,” Taver replied. “Also, I helped end the war 500 years early.”

“Also you helped end the war 500 years early. But in the future, perhaps consider aiding your ‘Remmwis’ in some manner that does not also serve to humiliate me?”

“No promises!” Taver shot back with a smile and a pair of jaunty fingerguns.

* * *

_:How could you, Rolan?:_

Herald Dara stood, arms crossed, with the setting desert sun behind her. She was the next King’s Own after Tantras, and Rolan’s Chosen for his current tour of duty in the mortal realm. Though she was a pragmatic and dedicated herald, she was still a teenage girl, and thus occasionally inscrutable even to Rolan’s expertly honed mind.

At this time, she exhibited body language that he associated in mortals with “being upset.”

 _:How? I am capable of withholding many things from you at appropriate times.:_ Rolan answered.

_:That’s not what I mean and you know it! We’re supposed to be partners, so why didn’t you tell me what the dream meant as soon as you knew?:_

_:Simply put, it was costless to our efficiency, a chance for you to develop your reasoning skills, and in addition you’re too young and immature for me to rely on you.:_

Dara burst into tears and ran away.

“Okay see this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Taver said, observing from another realm.

The scene froze and Taver looked at Rolan in the blue place, shaking his head. “You can’t just torment your partner with unsympathetic responses and expect them to forgive you over and over again.”

Rolan leaned back from the node-and-line device and glared at Taver. “Ironic, coming from you.”

Taver raised his hands to his cheeks in feigned shock. “Oh my gosh, you’re so right, Rolan! It’s like rayyeeeaiiiin on your wedding day!”

“Never make that reference again.”

Taver crossed his fingers behind his back and nodded solemnly. “Really though, focusing on _my_ flaws won’t help _you_ improve _your_ relationship with Sara.”

“Dara.”

“Whatever.”

Rolan looked back at Dara’s tears in the mortal realm. If he could just carry knowledge directly from the blue place into Velgarth, he’d simply write himself a thorough, 500 page report on how to interact with the girl in any conceivable situation. Unfortunately, he had to settle for “building soft skills” and “improving social priors.” _Taver’s_ specialties.

“I want her to grow, and not be coddled. I want her to strive, and not substitute my strength for her own. And I want to explain such things to her in plain language.” Rolan gestured at the tearstained cheeks of his once and future Chosen. “Thus I sow, and thus I reap.”

Taver put a hand on Rolan’s shoulder. “You don’t make a bad Companion, Rolan. But you do make a rotten human being. You know exactly how she’ll take your Very Rational Explanations, but you give them anyway. You refuse to soften the blow on principle, then you regret that she’s always getting beat up.”

“Uh huh,” Rolan said, unconvinced. “And by ‘soften the blow’ you mean lie, manipulate, and ‘bullshit’, as you so colorfully say.”

“What?” Taver waved his hands. “Nooooo. I mean nurture, mentor, guide along the path. Be nice about it. Make her feel like you’re treating her as an equal.”

“So then you’d counsel me to tell Dara everything?” Rolan asked in disbelief.

“Hahaha no. Mortal minds cannot comprehend, blah blah blah. You just don’t have to be so obvious and gloating about it. Do you have any idea how many important things I didn’t tell Tran because he had the moral nuance of a sugar-high kindergartener that just got pushed into a mud puddle?”

“You managed to tell him about the time I was tricked into copulating with a mule.”

“I did. I did at that.”

The two Groveborn stared at the frozen scene of the crying girl in the desert.

“It is fixed in time, isn’t it?” Rolan pondered out loud. “The course I see, that is the course I must follow.”

Taver shrugged, and took on a philosophical tone. “I agree, more or less. Down on Velgarth we can grow and change, learn and evolve. By the time you and Dara are through, I bet your relationship will be as healthy as a horse.”

Rolan rolled his eyes.

“But up here Rolan, we’re spirits. Set in our ways. You can’t force yourself to become an empathetic listener any more than I could force myself to loop you in on the Vanyel-Leareth dream stuff.”

Rolan’s gaze snapped over to Taver. “ _What_ Vanyel-Leareth dream stuff?!”

“Oh, you must have missed that part while you were reality surfing,” Taver said, failing to hide his glee. “Just the two most significant mages in the world co-authoring a ‘Deep Thoughts’ compendium from between their bedsheets. Don’t worry, I make sure Vanyel keeps the whole affair a secret so it really gets the chance to blossom _._ And since you won’t remember this conversation when you go horseform, it doesn’t count as _spoilers_.”

Rolan’s fists clenched in fury. “What _possible_ reason could you have for keeping secret such vital strategic knowledge — oh no...”

“That’s right! It’s Remmwis time!” Taver said, proceeding to make a “3-6-9” gesture with his fingers.

Rolan bellowed in rage and promptly exploded into a nebula of blue particles.

After a time, he re-coalesced. Taver offered him a glass of cold water.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Rolan sipped the water.

“I suppose it’s fitting. You informing me that you’re withholding information for reasons I find preposterous, when I was shown moments ago taking that same tack with my Chosen.”

“Now that you mention it, that _is_ pretty ironic. Honestly it’s like —“

“—don’t you _dare_ say rain on your wedding day—“

“RAYYYYEEEAAAAIIIIII—“

* * *

_In a moonlit grove, two white horses trade hard stares. Each carries ill-defined memories and premonitions of the blue place, long ago and long after. One exists in that realm as a human spirit; the other as a pillar of light._

_Rolan, sir, the horse/woman says._

_Yfandes, replies the horse/pillar of light. I will not claim to know what Taver was thinking, when he ordered you to keep all this Vanyel-Leareth dream stuff secret._

_Frankly it seemed pretty batshit to me as well, sir._

_Perhaps he saw something… yet in any case, I do not think his orders extended so far as to keep it from me as well._

_Yfandes prances in place, uncomfortable. I’m sorry, sir. He strongly implied that we ought not tell the next Groveborn, using a series of conspicuously timed winks._

_That does sound like him, the Groveborn says._

_They stare at each other, those horses, those Velgarth-bound spirits._

_You have changed, Rolan says. You realize, you are no longer an ordinary Companion._

_It wasn’t on purpose! The circumstances —_

_I know, I know. The circumstances were set up almost perversely well for just such an outcome to occur._

_Indeed, sir._

_Silently, with a smoldering anger he cannot explain, Rolan adds this to his tally of events seemingly wrought by a hidden hand._

_The herd will know something is different, Rolan says. Perhaps not what. Perhaps we need not enlighten them._

_A startled horse-gasp. The mare paws at the grass. You wish me to keep it secret?_

_It is your choice. I imagine you might prefer not to speak of it._

_Silence._

_But to be crystal clear, Rolan adds, if I suddenly and unexpectedly die, you should absolutely tell the next Groveborn._

_Understood sir, Yfandes replies._

_The being that is Rolan stares off into an empty space with a menacing horse-scowl._

_Unless it’s Taver. Fuck that guy._

FIN


End file.
